


Advent X

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Friends to Lovers, Gen, too much feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 11:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2730176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And this follows directly on the last one. Major mush. </p><p>It's not that Holmes Boys don't feel anything--it's that they feel so much they don't know what to do with it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent X

Mycroft reached blindly across the window seat until he found the cushion Father had thrown at him earlier. He clutched it to his abdomen, pulling up his knees, wrapping his arms around them, pulling everything tight to press the solid bulk close, the way he’d hugged a bolster in bed as a child.

He felt like he’d just lived through an emotional hand grenade going off. Or perhaps a tempest? Or…what? He felt too much, and too many different things at once.

He felt the same sick terror he’d felt ever since he’d first come out—only to have it turn to flaming incendiary hell, with Mummy wailing and Father storming that he’d upset his mother and Sherlock bursting in unexpectedly to add his teen-aged squall to the ongoing avalanche of reproach—an avalanche he’d only added to with his own incoherent spew of anger and hurt and cruel blame and resentment. Over twenty years, he thought, and he still felt that illness when he remembered… The fear flavored everything his family touched ever since.

Or did he feel fluttering, giggling joy? He had Greg… Greg…

Gods. Greg seemed to love him. Maybe did love him. It was possible, anyway. And he loved Greg and it hadn’t gone pear-shaped yet—instead it was a rattling, bewildering delight.

He had a lover.

He had a love-life.

And—his lover was here, at Holmescroft. For Christmas. The first Christmas Mycroft himself had ever planned and coordinated.

He’d done it for Greg—only to find he was really doing it for himself. It was the Christmas he’d always wanted and never received. It was everything he’d ever angrily thought that Christmas ought to be but never was. Who could have imagined that the first thing that had been necessary was for him to take command of Christmas himself?

Even if Sherlock ruined it, he’d already got more out of this Christmas than he ever had before.

He hugged the pillow tight, face tight to his knees, pulse racing, stomach churning with too-much-feeling.

The conversation with Father hurt and healed and sang through his blood like one of Sherlock’s damned drugs. The sense of _his_ home, filled with _his_ friends and family and…and his lover…he could stretch his awareness out and out, and imagine them—in the library, in the bedrooms, in the billiard room, in the little breakfast room he’d selected for their family meals, as the formal dining room was a cavern intended for double-decades of guests. He could smell the food cooking for tomorrow’s feast—the spicy smell of biscuits and of plum pudding, the first rich, lush meaty smells. The mince pies that he and Sherlock were going to fight over…

Only they wouldn’t have to fight because Mycroft had ordered enough to sate them all with extras to send home with Baby Brother, who was greedy as a jackdaw for mince.

He could see the tree in his mind’s eye—the entire Great Hall decked and lit, the Yule log ready to light, and the tree so tall he’d needed a ladder to trim it and wrap it in cables of fairy lights.  He could see each hand-blown glass icicle. Each rainbow-oil-slick iridescent teardrop. Each selected glass globe.

He could see the star at the top. Oh, he’d struggled so hard over what to put at the top. Not a fairy—the twee alone made him feel the need of dentistry. An angel, though? He was traditional enough to imagine Gabriel with his horn, at the Annunciation, or shouting “Fear Not!” to the entire world. But in the end his faith was too crooked, and too colored with doubts and footnotes and wry annotations to feel entirely at peace with an angel.

So—a star. A supernova. A blaze of light and hope…a pole star. A promise. A goal—because a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. He’d found the most beautiful thing online, all glass and mirrors and a tiny LED heart that glowed like hope itself.

There were presents under the tree. Stockings ready to be hung, no matter who laughed. There was fruitcake and eggnog and punch. There was music. So help him, he couldn’t claim credit, but there was even snow.

He hadn’t been so shattered in years—not even when Sherlock drugged the Christmas punch and committed murder. He felt too much. He didn’t know how to feel so much.

He reached blindly into his pocket and pulled out his phone, and did something he had never done before—never dared do.

_Two-and-one-half stories up, front stairway. Find me? Please? MH_

_You all right, love? GL_

_Yes. No. Just find me. Please….MH_

He felt a complete idiot—like Sherlock texting the poor man in the middle of a raid on the Waters family just to get help with his damned Best Man speech. Still, he hugged the cushion to his chest and turned his face to watch the stairway with all the hope and expectation of a child determined to stay up until Father Christmas arrived. When he heard the firm footsteps coming up over the chords of music from below, he felt his heart lighten and the terror ease a bit.

Greg smiled at him as he mounted high enough to see Mycroft curled on the window seat.

“Eagle’s eyrie?”

“I suppose,” Mycroft said, warmth sweetening the storm of feelings. “It was always my favorite place when Father opened the house up when we were little.”

Greg came to stand in front of the seat, arms crossed, head cocked. He was silent, watching his lover. Finally, he said, “You wanted me?”

Mycroft nodded, watching him in return.

“Wanted me for what?” Greg asked, amused and frustrated.

“Just—wanted you,” Mycroft said, softly. “I felt too much. I just—wanted you.”

Chestnut-round, chestnut-dark eyes blinked, startled. “I… Oh.”

Mycroft shifted, creating a space beside him on the window seat. He sat straighter, patted the cushion, arched his brows in silent question.

Greg smiled, and eased himself in close, in the little sliver of cushion available. “Going to slip off.”

“Not if I hold on tight,” Mycroft said, and pushed his spare pillow aside, pulling the other man close. He sighed and relaxed, finally.

Greg squirmed until he was lying sideways on his hip. He slipped his arms around Mycroft and held him as tightly as he was held, cupping Mycroft’s skull in the palm of one square hand. “What is it, Mike? What’s wrong.”

“Nothing,” Mycroft said, burying his face in Greg’s shoulder. “Felt too much. Happy. Sad. Old hurts. New pleasures. It—was too much. I couldn’t feel all that without you here.”

Greg was silent, then he suddenly gripped Mycroft tight—almost too tight. Almost, but not quite. “You silly prat,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Oh, God. You’re going to kill me. You silly, silly prat.”

Mycroft smiled, and for the first time risked saying it.

“I love you, too.”

The gasp; the sigh; the shiver that passed through both.

The peace.

Mycroft’s hand stroked Greg’s shoulders. “I can bear it, now.”

“Bear what?”

“All the light inside,” he said, and sealed his surety with a kiss.

Below a new carol started—something about a star. In the great hall Mycroft’s star shone bright…

But there on the window seat, the stars had come to rest, peaceful at last in each other’s arms.

 

**Nota Bene:**

Most of you will not have heard this carol: it’s a lovely, haunting thing by the Roche Sisters: [Star of Wonder.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFbE9ZStums) I could not find anything quite good enough to be Mycroft’s tree topper star, but [this](http://www.amazon.com/Kurt-Adler-10-Light-Reflective-Bethlehem/dp/B007Q0HVL8/ref=sr_1_107?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1417920457&sr=1-107&keywords=star+christmas+tree+topper) is a starting point—add a tasteful bit of color, and some extra shine, and then pipe it full of something mystical and you’re almost there.


End file.
